No one can deny that the Tories ran a stunning campaign to get back into power in May. It wasn’t a nice campaign. It wasn’t the kind of campaign that we would ever want to run, based – as it was – on the politics of fear and division. But, my God, it worked. We must learn from it. Not to repeat similar messages, but to replicate the style and method.
What absolutely clinched it was that the messages had a hard edge, were simple, and were delivered multiple times on a variety of platforms. You would have had to have been living underneath a stone on a far flung Hebridean island not to have picked up the messages that Tory HQ were pumping out. How much that then influenced the undecided (of which there are increasingly a large number) can now be clearly gauged by the fact that the Tories now reign unhindered for the next five years. And then they will employ a similar style of campaigning to quite possibly be in charge again. They need proper competition.
Time for us to wake up.
The times of triangulation messages are over. Our main messages cannot pitch us as being lesser versions of the two main parties, one of two horses in a two-horse race, or the ones that kept the Tories on the straight and narrow in the coalition. We must develop our hard edge. We must devise simple repetitive messages. And we must innovate in how those messages are delivered. We can’t advance from our diminished position at all without professional marketing input and a brand that people ‘get’.
I am pleased that Tim is focusing on describing what ‘liberal’ is, but it is going to be a long slog, especially when most people are not listening any more.
So, what to do? Arguably the team that delivered the string of recent unsuccessful elections will struggle to do the work required to change the way we campaign. There needs to be a bit of creative destruction if we are going to change tack and create an impact. Campaigning that is truly fit for 21st century politics is what we need.
How we campaign is now our most important issue – possibly existential in its overall significance. The aims, philosophy and principles that we stand for are too important to lie un-promoted. I am terrified that similar messages will be trotted out as in the Euro Elections when it comes to the EU Referendum. The clumsiness of the casino-branding for men and ‘Hello’ magazine-style branding for women cannot be repeated. The awful head and heart messaging of the General Election cannot have a chance of being replicated. It’s the kind of messaging and style that actually leaves you embarrassed and in despair, especially when you are working so hard on the ground.
More than anything it has been the soft tone and lack of impact of these messages that has cast us into possible irrelevance. We have to communicate in immediate ways that people can absorb in the brief seconds they have to assimilate information in their busy schedules. Whether that is: quasi-subliminal blind networking on social media and the internet, massive posters on advertising hoardings and buses etc, or promoting our more radical policies that will gain us air-time in the media, etc, etc.
It is the launch of the EU referendum campaigns that has prompted this. Please don’t make the same campaign mistakes again. It really is way too important, and as the only party 100% signed up to staying in the EU, we have to get it right.
* Helen Flynn is an Executive Member of the LDEA. She is a former Parliamentary Candidate and Harrogate Borough Councillor and has served on the Federal Policy Committee and Federal Board. She has been a school governor in a variety of settings for 19 years and currently chairs a multi academy trust in the north of England.
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32 Comments
Do you think that the Conservatives pulled over Lib Dem votes at a knife edge?
OP: “We have to communicate in immediate ways that people can absorb in the brief seconds they have to assimilate information in their busy schedules.” Personally, I prefer to chew my food over lunch.
The Tory campaign had one thing ours lacked in spades, namely MONEY. The late David Penhaligon famously said that, if you have something to say, stick it on a piece of paper and put it through a letterbox (or something like that). The question is, have we got anything to say, have we got enough people to deliver it and have we got the money to pay for it?
As far as the Tories reigning ‘unhindered for the next five years’ Helen should know by now that life is never that straightforward. Lots of things can go wrong – and that could be sooner rather than later. Without the funds the Tories have at their disposal my advice would be to GO WEST or, in this case, the southwest, and let’s try to win back some of those seats we lost last May!
What have to say over and over and over again is that the no campaign is offering insecurity for employment, uncertainty for inward investment and massive bilateral renegotiations of trade agreements with 28 countries .it would hamper G B in transforming the EU into real single market because GB would be tied up for many years trying to get back into markets that it currently has an automatic right to trade in .
The campaign is bad for the British economy.
I’m not altogether sure I understand this.
‘We must develop our hard edge. We must devise simple repetitive messages. ‘ What was, ‘The Party of IN,’ supposed to be as a message if not hard-edged and simple/repetitive?
‘We have to communicate in immediate ways that people can absorb in the brief seconds they have to assimilate information in their busy schedules.’ This sounds faintly like not giving the voters credit. Voters aren’t dumb and are quite capable of grasping an argument. Even if the internet sometimes gives a different impression.
Neil Sandison – Problem with that is that such a campaign would be treacherously close to, ‘vote IN for more corporate interest.’ Part of the problem here is that a lot of people, many of whom are far from EU-hating head-bangers have just had an absolute gutful of being told that we must all do, ‘what’s best for business.’ Even if they saw their interests as aligned with business (questionable at best) it’s not clear to me that there’s much appetite for more of the EU’s open agenda.
What one makes of that mood I will leave to you.
The Tories only have a majority of 12 and there is Europe and Cameron’s replacement coming up. Keep those by-election wins coming in.
The Tories didn’t win it. We lost it……………………………..by a combination of broken promises on welfare, the health service and student fees with ‘me too’ Cameronlite economic policies and Vince excluded from the Quad. However unfair it may seem, trust was forfeited and we were perceived as pale blue. Why vote for the cheap alternative when you can vote for the real thing ? Half hearted attempts at differentiation never got traction.
The many Tory seats gained in England over the preceding twenty three years by squeezing tactical Labour votes to get the Tories out (Harrogate included) went down the pan. On day one of the coalition those anti-Tory tactical voters were lost not just in England but in Scotland where the SNP campaigned on a no Trident/no austerity platform as well as nationalism.
Tim now faces a delicate balancing act of trying to reconcile different groups within the party…… hence the ‘be Nice to Nick bit ‘ at Bournemouth. I don’t blame him for that. He’s tactically astute and has great potential to grow. Long term it’s going to be a long slog unless Tim can establish a radical critique of the Tories, Labour self-destructs at Westminster and the Tories follow suit over Europe.
And yet… it was Harold Macmillan who said ‘Events, dear boy…………Events’. Dear Eric Lubbock (87 recently) triggered such an ‘Event’ to Supermac at Orpington. A by-election in Edinburgh West might just be that Event…. and we’ve got to pile in there if it happens (accommodation available in Dunbar)..
Whatever else, we’ve got to be seen as different, radical and relevant. Here’s to some ‘Events’..
Little Jackie Paper .The cold reality of the last election was people voted with their pockets .In my constituency most of the companies are Anglo -European .Their jobs and their employment security is certainly something they are talking about on the doorstep.
@John Marriott “The late David Penhaligon famously said that, if you have something to say, stick it on a piece of paper and put it through a letterbox (or something like that). The question is, have we got anything to say, have we got enough people to deliver it and have we got the money to pay for it?”
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.
I don’t often agree with the SLF but I do agree that we have to get away from this last century two horse race stuff and go with an insurgent economically liberal message
Neil Sandison – Sure. I guess the question in many respects is how far the EU referendum will focus on the economic and aspects and how far it will become something about wider issues, most likely immigration in particular. I make no value judgment here on immigration or the economics of the EU. I simply observe that this referendum may (stress, may) not be like an election.
About 18 months ago I thought that IN would win this pretty comfortably, but I’m less certain now.
“About 18 months ago I thought that IN would win this pretty comfortably, but I’m less certain now.”
Agree and that is worrying…
Hmmm…
‘Arguably the team that delivered the string of recent unsuccessful elections will struggle to do the work required to change the way we campaign.’
Surely you can’t be arguing on the front page of LDV that there should be a clear out of the deadwood at party HQ? When I argued that I got my posts deleted on the basis I was attacking party staff. I wasn’t – I was arguing that those at the top of the party should take responsibility for the disater that happened.
Sadly most of the senior people are still there – apart from the man who actually devised the strategy who has gone off to lose the campaign to stay in the EU.
“No one can deny that the Tories ran a stunning campaign to get back into power in May.”
Eh? Evidence please. Even with a less-than-lacklustre Labour leader, the Tories manage to rack up very little progress against their main opposition in England & Wales.
It was the Lib Dems and the Lib Dems alone who handed the Tories an overall majority on a plate.
We have to have the courage and conviction to say what we are (proud liberals) rather than the negative triangulatory guff about what we’re not. That’s what will win people’s minds. Well, more than 8% of them, anyway.
TCO and various others at various times..
I am really wondering what you propose to do in a real election in a real constituency where we are a close second to some other party.
Anyone who has ever been canvassing knows that the electorate are generally very unaware of previous results in their constituency or even which party their MP comes from in about 20% of cases… And in the absence of other information they assume every election in England is between Labour and the Tories. So even if they were persuaded of our policies they would vote Tory or Labour just to make sure the other one does not get in.
People who think we can win actual elections by just appealing to voters on policy without any mention of the tactical position in the constituency are, quite frankly, living in cloud cuckoo land!
Of course the air war is not about two horse races in our case. We do certainly need a more uplifting vision than being in between the other two. In 2010 I thought Clegg got over rather a strong message with “no more broken promises”. Not policy, of course, but something the electorate responded to… But then look what happened…
Tony Dawson,
Well, it was an increase in Labour votes that gave the Tories those Lib Dem seats in many cases. Our fault yes, but Labour voters could have stopped the Tory majority.
And it was Labour campaign failings that failed to deliver all those Lab-Con marginals, despite a significant swing from Tory to Labour in England and Wales as a whole. The Liberal Democrats generously declined to campaign in most of those seats, giving Labour a free run…
Blaming the “LibDems alone” for the Tory victory is a rewriting (if not reversal) of history that Stalin would have been proud of!
“Andrew McCaig 12th Oct ’15 – 11:38pm
” it was an increase in Labour votes that gave the Tories those Lib Dem seats in many cases”
Andrew, although there was an increase in Labour votes in many seats, the main issue in all the seats bar about two that we lost to the Tories was a straight loss of Lib Dem votes, many to the Tories directl – the monkey-organ grinder effect.. In any case, increased Labour votes is NOT evidence of ‘a stunning Tory campaign’ is it? The Lib Dems did not ‘generously decline to campaign’ in various Lab-Con marginals. We did not campaign there because we had no troops or money or spirit left in those places following a five year depletion of the Party outside of a few key areas.
As long as people perpetuate myths about the past they will never understand the present and never flourish in the future. I am afraid that your attempts to invoke Stalin to defend this false perspective (Labour’s fault for benefiting from Lib Dem collapse in 30 seats and not working hard enough in others) sound more than a little like the gospel according to Kim Jung Il.
Yes, Labour failed to win a number of seats in England they arguably could have (and lost the odd one to the Tories). They also won some. So, we didn’t (cheers!) get a Labour government of feeble Blairites. The fact of a Tory overall majority, however, is ENTIRELY down to Lib Dem losses, the germ of which was not so much in policies but a feeling among a large section of the population, developed way back in 2011, that Lib Dems did not represent anything much positive that they personally identified with.
Helen knows what she is talking about when it comes to marketing. And the Conservative victory was undeniably stunning – leaving us shattered, Labour floored and UKIP with just 1 seat and seemingly rrelevant, and 3 opposition leaders resigning. It is much more difficult to prescribe policy positions for the future, but that must include a solid appeal to the centre majority in British politics as well as being true to our values.
As I said at the start of this thread, it was money that gave the Tories the edge last May. I have to disagree with Andrew when he casts aspersions on the political awareness of many voters. I remember what happened to me during the 1997 General Election when I stood as the Lib Dem candidate in the newly created constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham, which was, and still is, one of the safest Tory seats in the country.
It was pretty clear that the Tories had run out of steam at Westminster and most bets were on Tony Blair. On countless occasions when the door was opened to me the first question asked of me was; “Who came second last time?” I had to admit that, in most of the areas covered by the new boundaries, it had been Labour. The result on polling day was the worst the Tories ever achieved and the best result ever for Labour, who still finished second, with me a respectable third in front of the Referendum Party candidate and an Independent Conservative. So much for lack of voter nous!
@Simon Boyd
“the Conservative victory was undeniably stunning”
Simon, with that definition of ‘stunning’, I would not wish to have you employed in an abattoir. 😉 The Tories made a mere handful of net gains from Labour.The popular vote in England hardly moved between Labour and Tory. How can that in any way be described as ‘stunning’? Their gains from the Lib Dems, however, which handed them an overall majority, were as a result of serial stunning ineptitude.
Good article. There seems to be a lock of willingness to measure our campaigning techniques against those of our competitors, preferring instead to believe that we still have the advantage we had in decades past whilst being unwilling to defend that. You can see that in the comments here.
This article covers both campaign process (intelligence, testing, innovation, targeting, etc) as well as briefly addressing messaging (who are we, what are we here for, how do our policies fit together), both things that do need addressing.
“No one can deny that the Tories ran a stunning campaign to get back into power in May.”
I can and I do. Their campaign was awful but it was aided by Clegg and other Lib Dems supporting their fear-monger in on the SNP. The fact is, there was no credible opposition, not that the Tories ran a great campaign, they didn’t. A majority of 12 is not a stunning victory, it’s getting in by the skin of your teeth.
It was the RESULT that was *stunning* because the pollsters got it completely wrong. Except their predictions about the Lib Dems which didn’t shift from single figures for five years and which were spot on.
I did a very informal survey of people at work to see what things they associated with the Lib Dems. The replies were tuition fees, Iraq war, penny on income tax to pay for education. Of those the most interesting is the third. Because it took years of repetition for that to gain traction and it is interesting that people still remember it. It has the virtue of being easy to understand and explain and about something fundamental.
To be honest whatever campaign we ran in 2015 we were always going to get slaughtered because of 5 decisions made by our leadership
1. Going into coalition with the Tories after we spent 20 years saying we were a progressive anti-conservative force.
2. The Rose Garden (appearing to be the Tory lap dog)
3. Tuition Fees
4.Bedroom tax
5. The Euro debate fiasco.
By the time we got to the General Election of 2015 we were stuffed even with the poor quality messaging we came up with as no-one no matter how good we sounded was listening.
We do have to come up with some distinctive policies and actually apologise for a lot of what we did in Government and I thought Tim missed an opportunity to do this in Brighton.
Where I do disagree with Helen is where she talks about stopping two horse race messaging. If, as I think this is a thinly veiled attack on Squeeze messaging she is entirely wrong – I’ve seen us lose plenty of campaigns when we’ve not squeezed the third party to death, I don’t think I’ve seen us win one.
I agree with rob, but I think Helen is right to raise the issue of how we campaign. It worries me that we seem to have the same people leading our EU campaign strategy and even worse, Stuart Rose as chair of the national campaign; his views about business with lack of concern for working people will turn people off the EU. We must start with good content, including the need to improve the EU and then consider a hard-edged, repetitive way of conveying that message. We must appeal to people’s emotions, with some good personal stories.
@rob “Where I do disagree with Helen is where she talks about stopping two horse race messaging. If, as I think this is a thinly veiled attack on Squeeze messaging she is entirely wrong – I’ve seen us lose plenty of campaigns when we’ve not squeezed the third party to death, I don’t think I’ve seen us win one.”
Frankly, though, what is the point? As you say in your analysis above “Going into coalition with the Tories after we spent 20 years saying we were a progressive anti-conservative force” was a major reason why we lost support. Playing a squeeze message to win a seat just means we go through the same cycle again.
I’d much rather win seats on the basis of being the progressive pro-economic and social Liberalism force.
ICM POll today , we are still at the dizzy heights of 7%!!!!!!. We need something.
Gosh, reading these comments makes me feel quite depressed.
Helen is right, a party needs to sum up its message in a single short sentence.
Tory message. – Don’t risk Labour , you might not like us but we’re competent.
Labour message – We don’t like the Torys – not much else that I can remember.
UKIP message – Stop politicians pushing us around, especially foreign ones
Green message – Vote for us if you don’t want real politics as you know it
Our message – We are not them
Not surprisingly, the strongest message won.
Yes, every party needs real depth and a full manifesto, but if you can’t express your basic message in a few words then your not going to win.
The most powerful message in my lifetime was just two words: New Labour.
Two words said all that voters wanted to know in 1997.
1. We are not the Tories – who by then we’re discredited in most voters eyes
2. Neither are we the old Labour Party.
It’s not easy. Producing manifestos, policies etc that run to reams of paper is easier, but we need to distil our electoral appeal into a few words or we’ll never come back
Helen has a point. Even taking into account our limited finances, our campaign seemed diffuse and reactive. An election campaign needs to push two or three basic messages hard. It can push all sorts of other things too, of course, but priority should clearly be with a simple and convincing message.
Good on you, Helen. Yes, we need to concentrate on constant, hard campaigning. I don’t see any difficulty in putting out a simple message about us: We are the only British Party which is united, sensible, and humane. I don’t see any difficulty in the methods of campaigning, either. We may not have money for national posters or TV adverts, and I leave the social media campaigning to others. But we can do as the late lamented David Penhaligon suggested and produce a mass leaflet which our candidates can use and activists can deliver door to door.
What to put in it? That’s simple too. 1. We say the good things we did in the Coalition. 2. We say the bad things the present Government has done since no longer mediated by us. 3. We say who and what we are, and that we are a UNITED party offering sensible and humane policies for the future. 4. We explain that we would commit to reducing the Deficit and reforming Welfare without making the poorest members of our society worse off, and that we are committed to reducing poverty and having decent housing for everyone. 5. We say we are an outward-looking Party which recognises the contribution immigrants have made to our society and wants more done for the refugees.
6. Finally, we say that we believe Britain is better and stronger for being in the EU, and will be campaigning strongly to stay in.
What are we waiting for, Lib Dem HQ, Lib Dem campaigners?
Helen makes good points in her article as does Rob in this comment sections. Here’s the 5 principle reasons the Lib Dems were hammered in the election.
1) Coalition with the Tories. I don’t usually agree with Tony Blair but he was surely right to say the LibDems spent 13 years being to the Left of Labour – then jumped into bed with the Tories! Lib Dems were saying ‘goodbye’ forever to a high proportion of its voters.
2)Tution Fees – this was a disaster. After spending so much of the 2010 campaign and run up up to it being the party to scrap fees – only to triple them in government. This should have been a ‘red line’. Obviously, tuition fees are essential – but making a song and dance about scrapping them – then hiking up the price was unforgivable
3) Warning Signs Ignored: within a few months of Coalition the Lib Dems were in the doldrums in the polls. For over 4 years you the party was under 10% in the polls and got slaughtered in local, European, Scottish and Welsh elections. Did the party expect a miracle on election day?
4) Being a Critic within Governement: the LibDems were part of the governement – but spent so much time focussing on what you stopped the Tories doing – rather than positive achievements. The Tories took credit for the £10,000 tax threshold policy and many Lib Dems switched to them! The party lost votes to the Right as well as the Left
5) the EU. The Lib Dems are pro-EU – fine. But too uncritical. A reform message was non-existent. Another U turn – this time regarding EU referendum
How can the Lib Dems win back support? I’m not sure it can!
John “How can the Lib Dems win back support? I’m not sure it can!”
To be perfectly honest, going by Tom Farron’s speech at the Confetence and some of the comments and editorials here on LDV, I don’t think the Lib Dems deserve to.
You simply cannot behave in exactly the same way as before and expect a different outcome.